So here’s where we are as of early Sunday morning in the saga of Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam.

On Wednesday, he made comments that could be seen as broadly supportive of infanticide. On Thursday, he refused to back away from them and said that he was being “mischaracterized.” Democrats and the media, by and large, supported him even as conservatives were outraged.

On Friday, Northam’s medical school yearbook was dredged up and it showed a photo of a man in blackface and a man dressed as a Klansman. That evening, the governor made a statement confirming that it was indeed him in the photo, although he didn’t say which one he was. Democrats and the media swiftly called for his resignation.

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On Saturday, still refusing to step down, the governor changed his story — he didn’t think he was either of the people in the 1984 yearbook photograph, he just put it in there: “When I was confronted with the image, I was appalled that it appeared on my page, but I believed then and I believe now that I am not either of the people in that photograph,” he said, promising not to resign.

However, he did admit that he “darkened my face as part of a Michael Jackson costume.”

“However, he went on to note that he had gone on to win that contest, in part because he could perform Jackson’s signature dance move — the Moonwalk,” Fox News reported. “When asked if he still able to perform the dance, Northam paused to look at the space next to him as if he was about to attempt the move, before his wife Pamela said it was ‘inappropriate circumstances.'”

It’s safe to say the Virginia governor is on shaky ground.

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The great irony was that Northam was marketed as an antidote to the supposedly racist Republican candidate Ed Gillespie in the 2017 gubernatorial race.

But even before that election, Northam had given more than a few indications he had problems on race.

Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas governor and Republican presidential contender, highlighted one via retweet — a video from the end of the 2013 debate for the lieutenant governor position.

As the original video shows, Northam refused to shake the hand of his challenger, E.W. Jackson — a black Republican.

That didn’t cause a controversy at the time. What did, however, was a flyer for his 2017 campaign which conspicuously omitted his black running mate, Justin Fairfax.

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At the time, Northam’s campaign officials insisted that this wasn’t their fault.

“The ‘Fairfax-free’ flyers were printed, the Northam campaign claims, at the behest of the Laborers’ International Union of North America, which supports a gas pipeline through Virginia,” The (Norfolk) Virginian-Pilot reported at the time. “The pipeline is opposed by many environmentalists, including Fairfax.”

This was roughly at the same time that Northam’s surrogates were running an ad, which National Review notes was created in conjunction with the campaign itself, that showed a pickup truck with a Confederate flag and a Gillespie bumper sticker attempting to run down minority children. This, mind you, was all just months after the Charlottesville clash that left a woman dead:

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Democrats claimed to be outraged because Gillespie’s campaign ran an ad featuring footage of MS-13 members, an apparently unconscionable sin and a surefire sign of bigotry. In case you haven’t seen it splashed all over Twitter, this was one of the reactions on election night 2017:

Of course, Sen. Harris hardly could have known that this yearbook existed at the time — she’s now one of the voices calling for Northam to step down — and Gillespie’s opposition research obviously didn’t turn it up.

That said, there were a few red flags that probably should have warned the Democrats that maybe Northam wasn’t the panacea to whatever racism they thought Ed Gillespie might bring to the Commonwealth of Virginia.

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In any event, Northam doesn’t seem about to step down. And why would he?

There’s no place for him to go, electorally. Virginia doesn’t allow its governors to serve consecutive terms and both of its senators are Democrats.

He could return to his career as a pediatric neurologist, although he’s certainly done enough to damage his brand between his remarks on abortion and his decision to put a thoroughly racist picture as part of his medical school yearbook (whether he was in it or not seems rather besides the point) that one doesn’t exactly imagine him commanding the kind of salary or patient base he had before, at least not immediately.

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The only path left for him is to go on some sort of manic three-year quest to redeem his image — which means you’ll see a lot of apologizing.

However, those apologies shouldn’t just be for a rebarbative yearbook photo, either. It wouldn’t hurt to publicly apologize to E.W. Jackson or to Justin Fairfax. One also would say Ed Gillespie also deserves an apology for being metaphorically portrayed as a pickup truck with a Confederate flag on the back that was running down minority children when, it turns out, if there really was a verifiable racist in the 2017 gubernatorial campaign, it was Ralph Northam.

I doubt that’s what will happen. The fact that Northam could have plausibly been seen as considering the Moonwalk during his news conference Saturday is a clear sign this is a man who doesn’t grasp the full thrust of anything he’s said or done this this week, whether it regards abortion or his racist past.

C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between America and Southeast Asia. He became a staunch right-winger at the age of three: While watching a clip of Ronald Reagan, he told his mother (to her great horror), "Mom, I'm a Republican." Except for a brief, scarring and inexplicable late high-school dalliance with Ralph Nader and his ilk, he's never looked back.
Aside from politics, he enjoys literature (especially British comic novels and modern Japanese lit), indie rock, jazz, spending time with his wife, drinking coffee and watching Formula One and football (of both American and world varieties). He is the proud owner of a very lazy West Highland white terrier and an extraordinary troublesome poodle mix of indeterminate provenance. His proudest accomplishments include reading the entirety of Thomas Pynchon's published oeuvre.